“No,” she cried. “Give them to me; give me those dicks.”
Davis nodded at Robeson. “You heard the lady,” he said.
Robeson rolled his condom off. The officers presented their dicks to the insatiable woman, who lay begging for them on the bed. Shawna grabbed their cocks and slid her hands up and down their shafts, licking, sucking, and milking the men until they both spilled on her face.
Shawna lay with her eyes closed, and her hips still pumping gently against the air. “I could cum a thousand more times,” she said. “You don’t know who you are fucking with.”
“No, you don’t know who you’re fucking with,” Davis said as he leaned in and kissed her on the lips, and gathered a little juice for himself. When Shawna opened her eyes, they were kissing.
THECUTB: So what did you think?
T.CALLOWAY: I think you’re very special. I think you’re going to make a great addition to our team. If we’re going to take our chances going to print in a digital world, I can’t imagine gambling on a more talented writer.
THECUTB: I really enjoyed writing the article. You should have seen Bill; he was so happy to be clean and in a bed at the hospital.
T.CALLOWAY: You describe him so well. I was standing in the hospital room with you. I never would’ve thought of putting a human-interest piece on a homeless man together with a food review. You even managed to tie in to the restaurateur’s American dream.
THECUTB: Well, at least now, her business should pick back up when people find out that her food isn’t contaminated with salmonella.
T.CALLOWAY: You’re building a very nice portfolio. You should start backing up your work on our server, in case anything happens to your hard drive.
THECUTB: OK. I will do it right away. I’ve been thinking about your offer. It sounds better and better to me all of the time. Can I call you to talk about it?
T.CALLOWAY: No, I really don’t do phones. Put it in an email. Got to fly.
BLUE STOOD IN THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE OF THE KITCHEN listening to Alex and Raven talk. Alex finished stacking the dishes in the dishwasher and Raven swept the floor.
“I don’t know why we have to clean up whenever we come over here,” Raven complained. “Don’t they have maids?”
“No,” Alex said. “It’s just the two of them. They don’t need maids.”
“Then they need to do whatever they do when we aren’t here,” she said, putting her broom down. She had swept lint and crumbs into a small pile on the kitchen floor. “I’m not picking that up.”
“Don’t start,” Alex said. “Please, we can have a nice time here. Tomorrow, I’ll take you outside. You can ride the horse.”
“That horse doesn’t like me.”
“I wonder why?” Alex said, holding the dustpan on the floor near the trash for Raven. “Just get the broom and sweep the trash in it and you can go watch cartoons.”
“No,” Raven said, crossing her arms. “I ain’t a maid.”
Alex was getting frustrated with the girl and wanted to go lay down, so she grabbed the broom and held the dustpan down with her foot.
“What are you doing?” Blue asked her.
“I’m sweeping this up so I can go to bed. I’m tired, Auntie, and Raven’s getting on my nerves.”
“Dump it out.”
“But, Aunt Blue…”
“Dump it out. I told Raven to do it and that’s just what she’s going to do; even if it takes all night.”
Alex did as she was told and handed the broom and dustpan to Raven. “I tried to warn you.” Raven stuck her tongue out at her sister. “Good night, Aunt Blue.”
“Good night, sweetheart,” she said, receiving a peck on her cheek from Alex, who happily trailed off down the hall and up the stairs to her designated bedroom. “Well?” Blue said, looking at Raven. “Is this going to be a long fight or a short night?” Raven dropped the dustpan and let the broom handle fall to the floor. “Have it your way,” Blue said, taking a seat at the table. “Stand right there and don’t you move a muscle unless you’re moving to do what I told you to do.”
How Hartford could have such an unruly child was beyond her. “Is he paying any attention to what’s going on in his house?” Blue wondered. She wasn’t going to beat the child, and she could not really make her stand there, but Raven was as stubborn as any Crow had ever been so she wouldn’t budge until she couldn’t stand anymore. Blue hummed gospel hymns while she waited for Raven to stand down. It took nearly three hours for Raven to break down and finally sweep the trash up and put it into the can.
“Okay,” Blue said. “Put those things in the closet. Then you can go to bed. But don’t turn on the TV, or we’ll have round two.”
RAVEN KNEW THAT BLUE WOULD BE DOWNSTAIRS for another couple of hours, drinking. She rolled out of bed and crept into Blue’s master bedroom. The carpet was soft under her feet. She stopped for a moment, squishing her toes in it as she looked around to see what she could do damage to without getting caught. The nightlight in the bathroom was on.
“Oh, yeah,” she said when she had figured it out. “Round two.”
“This is what you get, you evil bitch. You want to make somebody a maid. I’ll clean up for you, all right,” Raven said, pulling Blue’s toothbrush out of its holder on the sink. She knelt in front of the toilet and dipped the brush in the water and swirled it around. “Oh, my goodness,” Raven said. “Oh, my, is that a stain? Shame on me.” Raven scrubbed the stains from every corner of the toilet bowl with the toothbrush, until the bowl nearly sparkled. “There, the toilet is as good as new. Now let me get the shower.” She was inside the tub, behind the shower curtain, when she heard Blue coming.
Blue had to pee so bad, it seemed like her lungs were filled with vodka. She stumbled through her room and into her private bathroom and plopped down on the toilet. She seemed to pee forever. “Oh, what a relief,” she said. She wiped and was ready to get up, when she felt Dream Crow’s cabbage and vinegar taking her stomach over. “Uh oh,” she said.
Her asshole sounded off like a foghorn and expelled a scent that made Raven slide to the floor of the bathtub. Raven remained trapped in her own funky prison for a good fifteen minutes. It was torture but it gave Raven an idea.
The next morning, Raven was transformed; she was positive and engaging. She woke up bright and early and helped Dream Crow feed the chickens. She played Scrabble with her sister and her aunts in the afternoon and volunteered to clean up by herself after dinner.
Raven had even suggested the family movie Dream Crow should pick up from Blockbuster. “Oh, you’re going to just love Happily N’Ever After,” she said, singing praises of the film until Dream Crow and Blue left to go find it.
Alex was very suspicious. “What gives?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why are you being so nice, all of a sudden?”
“I just feel like it,” Raven said.
“Really? Aunt Blue must’ve had you standing on your feet for a long time last night. Shoot, if I knew that would work, I would’ve done it years ago.” Raven smiled at that, but did not laugh. “So, are you really going to clean the kitchen by yourself, or do you need me to help you? I will; I don’t mind.”
“I’m for real. I’m going to clean the kitchen.”
“Okay, then. I’m going to go take my shower and stuff. Let me know when they get back with the movie.”
“Okay,” Raven said, rinsing a dish and placing it neatly in the dishwasher.
“Hey, Raven?”
“Huh?”
“It’s nice to see you like this. Maybe tomorrow we can get the horse to let you on his back.”
“Okay.”
Raven turned the oven on to 350 degrees, like the tube of cookie dough instructed. She got a cookie sheet out of the cabinet and spooned the dough onto the cookie sheet, making three neat rows of four. From her pocket, she pulled the chocolate bar she had found in Blue’s bathroom medicine cabinet.
SHAWNA WAS STILL WALKING
ON AIR FROM HER TRYST with the Officers Friendly when Blue called her to come get Raven. “I’m telling you, she’s the devil and you need to come get her. She’s got every one of us over here sick, shitting all over the place.”
“I’ll just take them both,” Shawna said anxiously.
“That won’t be necessary,” Blue said, grunting into the phone. “There’s no sense in punishing Alex for what Raven has done. Alex wants to stay and we love having her. Besides, she’s sick too.”
“Fine,” Shawna said. “I’ll be there in the morning.”
“No, honey, if you want her back in one piece, you need to come right now,” Blue demanded.
She had Raven packed, prayed over, and waiting at the front door when Shawna arrived. Blue fanned sage smoke around with a church fan that had an image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on it and said, “Anything not here for the highest and best of good, be gone!” and pushed Raven out of the door.
CHAPTER 13:
WHEN STRANGERS COME TOGETHER
Korea hadn’t spoken to Stormy all weekend and Stormy’s attempts at apologies were futile. But when Stormy told her about Hartford, she was all ears.
It was funny, Hartford thought, how things always work themselves out for him. Here, he had come all this way to L.A. to experiment with a little ass play, but had found out that what he was looking for was actually already available at home, just minutes away from his own uneventful bedroom. He read the email from Stormy again, feeling his heart beat faster.
“I’ve been thinking about what we discussed. Have you? This is my email address, use it to contact me, I’m online every evening until about 9. When are you coming back home? Let me know if you need a ride from the airport. Korea would like to meet you.”
Hartford had been thinking about Stormy’s fantasy. The taste of her tongue was the most delicious thing he had savored at the restaurant the night they had met. He wanted more. If her lady friend looked and tasted anything like her, he could not wait to get back to Oakland. He was done with Shawna. He would stay married to her for the kids’ sake, or until some real wife material came along. But he was through with her. She was selfish, inconsiderate, spoiled, lazy, and superficial. He hated that he had been pressured by the music game to get with a woman like her. She was fine and all, but besides her good looks, there was nothing there. He really missed Magenta. His first wife was a real lady. Alex was so much like her.
Hartford picked up his phone and called his sisters. “Hey, Dream Crow. How’s it going?” She told him all that had happened, with Blue interjecting a few choice words in the background. Hartford was shocked and embarrassed. “I’m on my way home.”
“What for?” Dream Crow asked. “There’s nothing you can do here, besides bring us some toilet paper. We are just shitting all day, that’s all. Come to think of it, you should stay in L.A. as long as you need to get your out-of-town business finished. That way, when you come back here, you can be present and let these girls know that they have a father. You know, when you leave a house full of women together, there’s going to be drama.”
Hartford talked to his beloved daughter for a while and promised her that he would not leave town for a long time once he got home.
“I miss you, Daddy,” Alex said. “I can’t wait to see you.”
“I love you, baby girl.”
“I love you more.”
“That’s impossible.”
HARTFORD HATED TO ADMIT TO HIMSELF THAT SHAWNA WAS RIGHT about his career. The moment he laid ears on the future sound of Bandarofski Music Publishing, he knew he was a has-been producer. His smooth jazz-funk signature sound had been reduced to samples that lay the cadence for much more aggressive mechanical drum patterns, gnarly electro synthesized sound punctuated with pop culture punch lines and catchy rap hooks. The worst and best part of it: his managing director had hired ten young producers for the cost of one Hartford Crow.
There were four on duty the night he entered Band Studios with Sweet P on his arm. She wore a sheer black A-line dress with a royal blue panty thong and bikini top underneath, but the young producers barely acknowledged her.
“Hey, yawl! It’s him!” one of them said when he walked into the studio. “It’s Hartford Crow.” The boy, who could not have been more than eighteen, checked his face against the big picture on the wall of the music icon, who was shaking Jerome Bandarofski’s hand, and holding a Grammy music award. “It’s him,” he told Hartford. “I mean, it’s you!”
The other young musicians didn’t have to be told to stand; they simply did, talking over each other to introduce themselves. There was “Barry Bond, not Bonds with the s but without it, as in James.” Then there was “Ocean and Atlantis, like the lost city,” who always produced as a team. And finally, there was “Tommie with an i-e not a Y, aka Fayze,” who was the team executive and had more than twenty-five Hartford Crow samples in use after only two months.
“Mr. Crow, it’s such an honor…Mr. Crow, you’re the best,” Sweet P teased as he walked her to the studio door after the boys had ignored her for nearly an hour. “I’d bet anyone of them would consider tapping that prostate for you, if you asked.”
She was joking, but taking potshots at him at the same time. Hartford let it slide, knowing she was just jealous, though he wasn’t sure if she had anything to be envious about.
Hartford listened intently for the next few hours to the innovative usage of his most popular and classic works. They had even made use of some obscure music he had never released, but all remained a part of the Bandarofski catalog. He walked out of the studio, not sure about how he felt, but certain he needed to find something besides music and Shawna to occupy his time.
MORE THAN A WEEK HAD PASSED since he had seen any of his girls, but Hartford couldn’t stop thinking of Stormy and her wild fantasy, so instead of calling Shawna, he called Stormy to pick him up from the Oakland airport.
“I’m on my way,” Stormy said. “Southwest?”
“Yes,” Hartford said.
Stormy called Korea to let her know they would be having a guest for dinner and possibly dessert. She dressed quickly, hit the 880 Freeway, and collected the man before he had a chance to change his mind.
Hartford would not have guessed by Stormy’ free-spirited, hippie-flared style that she was living, as his grandmother would have said, “so high on the hog.” But the penthouse was undeniably phat.
“Damn,” he said. “If I was a bachelor, I wouldn’t mind this. I wouldn’t mind this at all.”
He accepted a glass of chardonnay from Stormy, who promised that the object of his ambitions would be arriving soon. In the meantime, she showed him Korea’s state-of-the-art workout facility, her garden, and stainless steel gourmet kitchen. She gave him a quick peek at the designer master bedroom they might be experimenting in later that night and then led him to the east balcony of the penthouse where they sat and talked.
As soon as Korea saw him, she wanted to fuck him. Korea did not believe in awkward moments, so when she arrived, all conversation stopped and the pair immediately got physical with a telling kiss.
Stormy was right, Hartford thought, Korea’s beautiful. Hartford was digging her swagger from the moment she had said hello. She had actually looked him up and down, like he was a piece of meat. Now that was new, he thought, hoping he hadn’t blushed like the bitch he felt like in the moment. Except for her obvious attraction to designer clothes and footwear, Korea wasn’t anything like his wife. She really has her shit together, he thought.
But he couldn’t figure out what was going on with Stormy. From the moment Korea walked in the door, she was a nervous Nellie, dropping things and stuttering. There wasn’t even a hint of the confident woman he had met in Los Angeles. It wasn’t until she started running down her dinner menu that she even started making sense.
“Stormy, what’s for dinner?”
“Uh, I um, I wasn’t sure what you had a taste for tonight, and I knew we had a guest coming…Hartford, I hope you li
ke chicken and fish…”
“Stormy, get on with it. What did you cook? You did cook, right? Because if I see another take-out box…”
“Your choice,” Stormy finally said, confidently. “Smoked chicken with caramelized onions and Shiitake mushrooms or fresh Atlantic salmon cured with salt and sugar and perfumed with lemongrass. There’s some wild rice and Lyonnais potatoes with sweet cream butter and fresh Romano cheese, just like you like them, baby. Your vegetable choices are Sicilian cauliflower with capers and sage or zucchini bacon fritters with basil-mayo dipping sauce.”
The sound of it made Hartford’s mouth water. The only thing Shawna knew how to make that was anything close to gourmet was her “special vegetarian, not really beef, beef nachos.”
“Didn’t you make a salad? I told you I wanted a salad,” Korea quipped.
“Of course,” Stormy answered, unfazed by her attitude. “I made a spinach salad, made of baby spinach from my garden.”
“Oh yeah? What’s in it?” Korea asked nicely, after realizing Hartford would need to see some softness in her if he was to agree to be her bottom.
“Well, baby, the garden is doing so well. The salad is made up of sweet cherry tomatoes, English cucumbers, fire roasted red onions, and garlic. I topped it with a sliced boiled egg, pecans, and crumbled blue cheese. The dressings are homemade. There is a warm bacon dressing and red wine vinaigrette with pomegranate.”
“That sounds mouthwatering,” Hartford said.
“Well?” Korea said to Hartford. “Are you going to wash up for dinner, or are you one of those men who doesn’t wash his hands until after he touches his food, or his dick?”
He liked her sense of humor. Though, he admitted to himself, it was hardcore coming from a woman. But if he was going to let her inside him tonight, or any other night, she would do well, he agreed with himself, to stay just like she was.
“MY GOD, WOMAN,” HARTFORD SAID, RUBBING HIS BELLY after dinner. “You are blessed.”
“Yes, baby, it’s true; you outdid yourself tonight,” Korea interjected into the line of emotional fire between them. She wondered for a second, but quickly dismissed the idea, that they had been intimate. Then turning to Hartford, she said, “I want you to be comfortable and clean tonight, so use the master guestroom to get ready. I have to work out. Stormy will come for you in a couple of hours. Is that cool?”
The Punany Experience Page 19